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Climate Change

Climate change is a major threat to people, and to the ecosystems upon which we all depend. Warming is set to become the major driver of species loss: it thus obliges us to reconsider our societal models, and to find ways to live more sustainably Natural processes and the environment are threatened, with implications for our food security, health, quality of life and perhaps even our long term survival.

We advocate for urgent, swift and decisive mitigation action. Our demand, maintaining global average temperature increase to less than 2°C, is based on scientists’ recommendations regarding what is a ‘safe’ amount of warming. Even this limit now looks too high, in the light of new evidence.

Conserving a rich biodiversity and mitigating the effects of climate change are closely linked. Efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions must be stepped up, but not at the expense of short-term loss of habitats or creation of unintended indirect emissions. The destruction of carbon rich habitats, such as forests and wetlands, is a major source of emissions, while healthy ecosystems are better equipped to adapt to climate change and in many cases also better at storing carbon.

We advocate for a more climate friendly EU budget and better rules on emissions related to the agriculture, forestry and bioenergy industries. We also run campaigns against dirty fossil fuels and we engage with energy businesses to find sustainable and pragmatic solutions, especially through the deployment of renewable energy.

Projects:

BESTGRID - With nine partners comprising European non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and transmission system operators (TSOs), and one research institute, the EU-funded BESTGRID project works towards modernizing and expanding the current European electricity grid.

Stichting BirdLife Europe gratefully acknowledges financial support from the European Commission. All content and opinions expressed on the ECA section of this website are solely those of Stichting BirdLife Europe.